What can you do if there’s an outage or breakdown in Office 365 email cloud services?

Over the last few weeks Office 365 has broken down a few times. These outages have and will happen to even the best of cloud services.

You can keep on working until Microsoft fixes the problem, if you’re prepared.

Most of these suggestions are things you should do, even if you have 100% confidence in Microsoft’s cloud management. The general advice applies to anyone with cloud based email storage, Office 365, Exchange Server, Gmail or other.

Know your email options

Most outages are not a complete breakdown of email hosted on Office 365.

You’ll see people complaining that their ’email has stopped’ and the media often echoes those reports. But they’re usually not entirely true.

Often just one connection to your email store has broken but there are other ways to access the same Exchange Server mailbox.

The mailbox itself is usually running quite normally and even receiving new messages. People think the entire email system is broken but it’s only the connection method they use.

These are the two most common ways to access an Office 365 / Exchange Server mailbox – you’re probably using one or more right now:

Outlook desktop Windows or Mac via ActiveSync – this is the most common way Microsoft Office users get their email.

Outlook apps also work with ActiveSync but pass through another Microsoft server which saves your login details and passes your messages to/fro. That’s a difference not well understood and the reason we continue to NOT recommend the Outlook apps for Apple and Android.

There are other ways to reach your mailbox and it’s a good idea to be familiar with them before an emergency arises:

Try OWA by getting the web link from your mail host settings and logging in. Add the link to your browser favorites so you can quickly access your mailbox if Outlook/ActiveSync falls over. The link is in Outlook at File | Info.

The great thing about OWA is it’ll work from any computer with a browser and net connection. If your main computer ‘dies’ just go to another one (a colleague, your kids).

IMAP — IMAP is another way to synchronize Outlook (or other email program) with an online mailbox. Standard ActiveSync is better but IMAP is usually available too, it depends on your mail host settings. As a fallback, setup Outlook (using a different profile) with a working connection to your mailbox.

POP3/SMTP – the old-fashioned way to get mail. It doesn’t synchronize with the mailbox and isn’t recommended … but if you’re desperate, give it a try.

Keep everything offline

Modern Outlook defaults to only keeping the most recent emails on your computer with older stuff kept in cloud storage only. That’s only a good idea on computers or tablets with limited disk space. It’s an example of a default setting which suits Microsoft’s broader corporate agenda but not necessarily their customer’s needs.

Office-Watch.com always syncs their Exchange Server account fully to a laptop or desktop computer. It lets us keep working when there’s no Internet connection (eg on a plane) or when the Internet access is slow, erratic or expensive.

Alternative email account

Setup an alternative email account with a totally different provider. It the worst happens, you can use the second email service to keep in contact with the world.

If you have Office 365 hosting, setup a Gmail or Yahoo Mail account.

If you’re using Google Gmail or G-suite, setup an Outlook.com account.

The alternate account can be used to send emails. Outlook for Windows/Mac will have your old messages (see below). Copy details from Outlook to make messages in the alternate account.

Sure, you could setup a second account if/when there’s a problem. Better to have the alternate setup and ready when you need it.

Warning! A second email account is a good idea and we know many Office-Watch.com readers have one already. The trap is getting confused about which email address or account used in a particular situation. We get many complaints about ‘missing’ emails which were really sent to an alternate (but forgotten) email account.

Once you have a second mailbox setup there are various options available to use it regularly and in an emergency.

Webmail – Email via your browser is the most common way to send/receive messages when things go awry.

Outlook – Add a new account to Outlook for Windows/Mac which connects directly to the alternate mailbox. This lets you use the second account easily within Outlook.

Connected Accounts is an Office 365 and Outlook.com feature which lets you grab new mail from external mail accounts and put them into your Office 365 mailbox. Useful in normal life but a problem is Office 365 goes awry.